Subject: bug#4422: diff-switches is a bad idea

From: Reuben Thomas <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2019 14:29:28 +0100

On Tue, 1 Oct 2019 at 14:18, Lars Ingebrigtsen <[email-masked]> wrote:

>
> I'm not extremely familiar with the vc code, but looking at it in Emacs
> 27, at least, the switches for diff in CVS comes from
> vc-cvs-diff-switches, if I read the `vc-switches' function correctly.
>
> So has this problem gone away in the years since this was reported?
>

Not as far as I can tell. It is still necessary for me to set
`vc-diff-switches` explicitly, e.g. to `t`, meaning "no switches". From the
docstring for vc-switches:

In decreasing order of preference, return the value of:
vc-BACKEND-OP-switches (e.g. `vc-cvs-diff-switches');
vc-OP-switches (e.g. `vc-diff-switches'); or, in the case of
diff only, `diff-switches'.

In other words, `diff-switches` is still used by vc.el, and I still think
that's a bad idea.

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